MUSIC REVIEW: Peter Wolf and the Midnight Travelers

Sunday

Apr 16, 2017 at 12:17 PMJan 30, 2018 at 12:23 PM

By Jay N. MillerFor The Patriot Ledger

“There’s a New Orleans tradition,” Peter Wolf was saying after his second song Saturday night before a capacity crowd of 280 at the Narrows Center, “when someone dies, you grieve and you mourn. But then you celebrate their life ... with a house party. And that’s what we’re going to do tonight in honor of Mr. J. Geils.”

And with that, Wolf and his superb backing quintet, The Midnight Travelers, kicked off a hellacious rendition of “Homework,” one of the earliest hits that put the J. Geils Band on the map way back when, a raucous rocked-up version of an old Otis Rush tune and a perfect example of the way the band of blues and R&B lovers from Beantown melded classic sounds into their rock.

Of course, the second song Wolf had just finished could be viewed as rather poignant too, as his own “Long, Long Ride” is a sort of summing up of how life sometimes doesn’t follow the path you wanted or expected, but you’ve got to keep marching on.

And if you really wanted to keep looking for extra meaning, Wolf’s more recent song “Rollin’ On,” done later in the one-hour-forty-minute show, surely had added resonance this weekend. It appears to be Wolf’s clarion call to himself and his fans that he has no intention of retiring, with lines like “Don’t want to fade away, let the world run over me, I’m taking off straightaway, side by side and come what may, And I’m rolling on..” A bit later the lines “I’ve got miles on this heart, But I’ve never been afraid to start, Cut it loose and set if free, Straight from here to eternity” make his intentions pretty clear.

But that brief early mention, and the added impact of those lyrics, were not the only ways the late Geils seemed to hover over this night. All the crackling guitar work from Duke Levine and Kevin Barry, two of Boston’s best six-string wizards, evoked the sound and refined melodic taste of the late Geils. No doubt, some of the J. Geils Band hits are still highlights of Wolf’s set, and the current sound of Wolf’s music is not so much a radical change from the band sound, as it just broadens it with touches of country and swing, moving it more toward Americana. But it’s nothing the late Geils himself wouldn’t appreciate.

As music fans we’re always confounded, frustrated and disappointed when beloved bands break up. Geils himself had gotten away from music completely after the band broke up in the mid-1980s and indulged his love of foreign sports cars. Wolf had gone on to a solo career that has produced an incredible run of quality work, even if most of it hasn’t dented the charts. Neither one of them really seemed eager to mount an oldies tour with their bandmates, but by 1999 a reunion was forged, and the popular response was tremendous. And anyway, is it an oldies tour if the music is timeless, and just as raw and vital now as it was in 1970?

Those reunions continued through 2011, but Geils had by then turned to more jazz guitar, or swinging blues, especially in a stellar trio with fellow guitarists Duke Robillard and Gerry Beaudoin. When the band wanted to keep on with the reunion gigs, Geils opted out in 2012, but subsequently his mates discovered he had trademarked the band name. No doubt both sides of the various issues had their reasons, but Geils had been replaced in the reunions by Levine, and turned back to his jazzier stylings, quite often in recent years with Doug Bell of Hull, leader of Bellevue Cadillac. Things happen, people move on and don’t want to linger in the past, and as fans we ought to respect that.

(Last week, at our request, Bell, now at his Florida home, sent along this memory: “Jay Geils was a collector of guitars, Italian cars and music. He always knew deeply what he was talking about and the knowledge extended to his playing. Jay was an exceptional jazz and blues guitarist. When you hear the words ‘a true gentleman,’ that was Jay Geils.”)

Wolf’s 23-song set Saturday night was certainly a rousing blast of vitality, as he darted and danced about the stage like a teenager, and noting that Wolf is now 71 will doubtless shock and amaze many of the decades-younger fans who were on hand. A simmering “Growing Pain” from Wolf’s later work was a delectable early highlight, and having John O’Connor, apparently an octogenarian, come up out of the audience to recite an Irish poem was a sweet surprise, rewarded with a standing ovation for Mr. O’Connor. “Nothing But the Wheel,” done as a duet with Mick Jagger on the 2002 recorded version, is always a live set high point for Wolf, and Saturday’s easy rolling soul take on it was superb.

Wolf’s latest album, last year’s “A Cure For Loneliness,” has some tasty co-writes, and Wolf and R&B star Don Covay penned “It’s Raining” for the late soul singer Bobby Womack, and it got a buttery smooth reading Saturday. The stripped down – basically just one guitar and Barry’s pedal steel – treatment of “Waiting for You” was bleak and haunting, almost a Leonard Cohen type of feel. But pivoting quickly out of that, Wolf’s “Rolling On” was every bit the paean to life and living it that he intended. There were many moods during the night, from the plaintive country-rock of “Wastin’ Time” to the seductive melodic lilt of “Peace of Mind.”

Wolf made a quick dedication to “the recent Nobel prize winner” before doing a rootsy rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Going, Going, Gone.” Wolf was surely dancing up a storm during the powerhouse rock of “Lights Out,” and the only slightly less hectic “Never Like This Before.” A bit later he introduced a song from the second Geils band album (1971), a number he noted they’d used to blow the crowds away at the old Boston Tea Party, and “Don’t Need You No More” was the kind of extremely up-tempo boogie-rock that still has that effect. The home stretch was a torrid “Give It Up” followed by the always incendiary “I’m Lookin’ For A Love.”

For his encores, Wolf started with a curveball, a tune from his solo debut, that 1984 “Lights Out” album, and “I Need You Tonight” was done more as a bittersweet, mid-tempo, twangy country-blues ballad. Taking a quick moment to thank a table of The Wolfpack – five fans who’d come up from Baltimore for the show, in their matching shirts – Wolf ended the night with a sizzling take on “Musta Got Lost.”

Opening act Roy Sludge is a longtime Wolf pal – his last album featured Levine on guitar and Barry on pedal steel. Sludge played in a duo with Johnny Sciacia, Boston’s busiest bassist, and their half hour set mixed traditional country, humor, and Sludge’s impossibly deep vocals. From the swinging rockabilly-tinged “Nitro Express” to the almost comically downbeat “King of the Winos,” to a rather jaunty rendition of Ernest Tubb’s “Nails in My Coffin,” this duo was a delight. The title cut from Sludge’s 2011 album was the capper, perfectly blending that country/rockabilly sound, Sludge’s basso profundo vocals, and his wacky humor for “Too Drunk to Truck.” It was a trucking song, honest.

Peter Wolf and the Midnight Travelers, with Roy Sludge, at the Narrows Center for the Arts, 16 Aanwan St., Fall River, Saturday night, April 15, 2017.